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but did not indicate how this particularly unfortunate class of infants is to
be compelled to attend school. They recommended that the baby class should
still (Chap. 10) be attached to and organised on the lines of the Elementary
School, but adapted to the age of those to be admitted and be called a Nursery
School (Chaps. 3 and 4), open not solely to infants with unsatisfactory homes,
but to all infants aged three to five years.
The most valuable expression of opinion by the Committee is almost at the
commencement of the Report. "There is in the natural relationship between
mother and child, and in the other influences of good home life, a moral and
educational power which it is of high national importance to preserve and to
strengthen, and which educational policy should be careful not to impair."
This beneficent ideal is pursued in a paragraph in Chapter 11, where, in
discussing the lower limit of school age, the opinion is further expressed that
"nothing should be done which might arrest the development of the idea that
the best place for all children under five is a good home." But, the
consideration of the means of attaining this ideal appears to have lain outside
the Committee's province.
The Report was full and thorough in its scholastic aspect, but those who
regard scholastic education or scholastic association as inapplicable to infants
under 5 years of age felt that their views received less consideration than
the views of scholastic experts. It was satisfying, no doubt, to scholastic
minds, but not so to hygienic, medical, and social minds. The Report spoke
of the "large number of unsatisfactory homes," but no searching inquiry
was held into the number of children admitted to school under 5 years of
age whose homes were unsatisfactory, nor was anv suggestion made as to
inquiries in future into the condition of such homes, with a view of
ultimately finding a remedy or remedies. There was universal sympathy
with the expression of opinion that no sufficient alternative was then
available, and it behoves those who take into the perspective of the picture
a proportion of hygienic, medical, and social views that they should seek
to construct an alternative to the scholastic baby class.
Conclusions.
In coming to conclusions, it is necessary to have in mind a clear picture of
the facts.
Measles is a disease to which practically all children are susceptible.
When they come into contact with the infection they develop the disease.
The long incubation period, and the insiduous approach of the invasion
period, render it impossible in practice to prevent the spread of measles in
infant schools. The mortality of the disease amongst children over 8 years of
age is not serious, but it is serious amongst children under 5 years of age.
Admittance to school, that is, the convergence to a centre of a large number
of children under 5 years of age, conduces to the spread of measles amongst
those children in whom it is specially desirable to postpone exposure and attack.
It is too late to take effectual precautionary measures after measles has entered
an infants' department. If such measures are, on occasion, temporarily
successful, the postponement is of short duration. The most effectual measure
of precaution is the permanent exclusion of children under 5 years of age from
the infants' departments of Elementary Schools.